


the morning light don't steal our soul

by plinys



Series: ABC Fic Challenge [23]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 5 Times, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-30 00:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5144369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia learns far too early that wishes won’t come true unless she makes them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the morning light don't steal our soul

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched the TFA trailer and got a lot of Leia feels, so this happened.
> 
> Also for my abc fic challenge, the letter is "w" for "wish"

1

There was a story her mother had told her, when she was just barely a girl.

Of wishes that could come true. They would sit on the balcony of the palace, finding pinpricks of light in the sky above them.

Time and time again, she finds the lights that flutter, unsteady in their paths as they move across the sky.  

It had seemed back then that her mother had the names for everything, the answer to every question Leia could possibly conceive.  The lights above them were just another bit of her mother’s vast supply of knowledge.

‘S _atellites’_ her mother names them for her, while others are named as _‘space stations_ ’ or _‘star destroyers’_.

The last had always given her pause, confusion spilling across her childlike features, she would inevitably ask the same question time and time again.

“What happens when a star dies?”

Her mother always plays along.

“A wish comes true.”

 

2

Leia learns far too early that wishes won’t come true unless she makes them. That waiting around for others to do something rarely works out.

Any illusions about a divine spirit intervening on her behalf is a childhood fantasy long since forgotten.

She’s one of the youngest and most vocal senators the _Empire_ has ever had and yet sometimes it still doesn’t seem like anything is actually getting done.

Leia spends more nights pacing about her father’s study in their senatorial rooms, ranting and ravings about injustices she’s only barely noticing.

“What is the point,” Leia says, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, “Of even having a senate if the emperor isn’t going to even pretend to listen to us. We’re not even a governing body, we’re just an illusion, to make the average citizen of the galaxy feel better at night. As though someone other than the emperor has a say in things and-“

She falls silent at a soft and familiar sigh.

For some reason, no matter how many times she tried to emulate it Leia could never manage to get her own tone just right. His was always a perfect mixture between fondness and sternness.

“I understand you are upset, little one.”

“That’s an understatement,” she grumbles, under her breath.

If he hears her he doesn’t react.

“On Coruscant there are ears everyone, one must be careful what they say, particularly those in positions such as ours,” he continues.

“I know, but-“

“When we return home, I have a proposition to discuss with you. Remind me, when we are alone once more.”

 

3

Looking up at the sky above her, as the Death Star explodes into millions of pieces, she cannot help but wonder if _this_ is when her dreams come true. Perhaps that can attribute to the feeling in her chest, a deep sense of relief, as though the pressure that had been building there over the years was finally slipping away.

They’d turned the tides of the war, the empire was going to fall, and she was going to be standing there when it did, ready to pick up the pieces and put what was left of the universe back in order.

Her quiet reprieve is broken, by the soft whirling of the med-droids around her, as they apply much a needed bacta to her blaster wound.

That and the presence of her number one distraction in this war.

“We did it,” she says, eyes settling on him.

There’s one of those casually smirks on his lips, the kind that still leaves butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “That _you_ did, princess.”

She wants to correct him, insist that this was a team effort. That if anyone should be getting the majority of the credit it would be Luke not her – but this, this is her wish coming true. Or at least, starting to…

“There’s still a lot to do, of course, reorganizing and restructuring the republic. And certainly there will be those still loyal to the empire that will have to be taken care of-“

“Just make sure to take care of yourself first.”

 

4

She’s never been overly religious.

There was a temple back on Alderaan that she had attended from time to time as a girl, she remembers it sometimes when she closes her eyes. A soft hum of music, white stone buildings reaching to the sky, and a faith in something that isn’t even real.

It’s hard to have faith in anything not, in sight of that.

Still she manages to contort her lips into a hint of a smile every time Luke insists that the _force_ will guide him, before taking the next step closer to the edge or throwing himself into the next nearly hopeless battle.

The force is real.

Leia knows that much.

She can feel it moving through her veins, responding to the world around her, each life form holding a small essences of it within them.

And yet…

Leia wishes sometimes that she could hold the same blind faith in the force, that she could trust in something without question to lead her through the troubled times.

She tries.

It isn’t always the most successful endeavor.

More often than not, she pulls him towards her just before he goes off to the next battle. Tugs this newfound brother down to her level, to give him a well-practiced look of concern. 

And asks him for something he cannot guarantee.

“Promise me, you’ll come back safe and sound.” The _both of you_ goes unspoken.

But Luke hears her, he always has.

Whether or not he understands her, is a trick she hasn’t quite figured out yet.

He grins at her, easy and unabashed, saying, “May the force be with you,” as a final farewell.

She never manages to return his sentiments in time. Not until it’s too late to see him smile one last time.

 

5

“I can’t lose you too,” she whispers, voice barely carrying over the noises around them.

He hears her though, tightening his grip ever so slightly, speaking a silent language that she knows deep within her soul.

“You won’t,” is all he has to say on the matter.

It’s a promise, in the only way he can give it.

She doesn’t have to say the rest.

That she’s already lost too much.

That some days it’s hard to have faith.

That she’s so close to breaking she can scarcely keep herself together on her own.

(He knows.)


End file.
